Background:
The conventional process of industrial chitin production from prawn shell waste is a chemical process utilizing both acid and alkali. The effluent released contains quite lot of unused acid and alkali leading to chemical pollution in the vicinity of the unit. The process also involves utilization of substantial quantity of NaOH resulting in comparatively low-quality chitin. Since the protein is reacting with NaOH, the resulted protein is seldom used:
Technology Details:
A specially designed machine is used to remove the protein content from the shell before adding chemicals. Hence the improved process requires less chemical use. This in turn improves the chitin and chitosan quality and incur less cost for the process. The effluent quality also improves resulting in less cost for ETP. The protein separated can be used for many products including feed and other bio active molecules.